


Something Fishy in the State of California

by princewardo



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Drinking, Fish Puns, French Kissing, M/M, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29629434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princewardo/pseuds/princewardo
Summary: Sean Parker knows there is something fishy about Eduardo Saverin. How else could he be so annoying yet so infuriatingly hot?[underwater fill for The Prompt Network]
Relationships: Sean Parker/Eduardo Saverin
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10
Collections: The Prompt Network





	Something Fishy in the State of California

**Author's Note:**

> once again this prompt challenge made me bleed my own blood and I have no one to blame but myself! thank you to everyone who tolerated me claiming to be writing “fish sex” for two weeks straight.
> 
> check out the prompt network and give it a go! it’s fun, we’re creating so many new works AND you get cute stamps!!!

Whoever was knocking on the door was _pissed_ , Sean could tell. It wasn’t a cop knock, so he tucked the cordless phone into the crook of his neck. 

He edged barefoot around the loose bud the girls had tipped into the carpet before they’d managed to work out the jumbo bong.

“What you have to understand, Jimmy,” Sean carried on, even as he slid the deadbolt open and turned the knob, “is that they’re always watching, waiting, jotting down your likes, your dislikes, collecting data, collecting _your secrets_ , and you’re just handing them over.”

The door swung open, sticking in the frame a bit thanks to the humidity. It was coming down in warm sheets outside. The cars on the road were practically floating past, the spin of their wheels masked by the puddles they dashed through.

Eduardo Saverin was standing on the doorstep, Tom Ford coat and Prada suit jacket plastered to his skin. His messenger bag was tucked up under the flap of his jacket, for whatever good that was doing it. Eduardo looked like he’d just swum over from New York. A long, lean, slick-haired boy, straight off the swim team.

Then Eduardo opened his mouth, and ruined the whole picture for Sean, as usual. 

“Well, are you going to invite me in?” Eduardo said through gritted teeth. 

Sean laughed, incidentally into the phone receiver, prompting Jimmy to chuckle back vaguely in confusion. That guy seriously needed to take a break. He’d been running big names against big numbers for Sean for at least three days straight now and sleep deprivation meant low comprehension.

“Come on in, Aquaman,” Sean waved Eduardo in, ever the welcoming host. 

Eduardo prickled, shifting from foot to foot in the alcove as Sean dawdled in the doorway.

There was this spot above the doorstep where the joist had been put in crooked or something. Whenever it rained (so, maybe twice now this summer) the overflowing drips that escaped the gutter all trickled down the plaster. Then they ran along the sloping joist above the doorway, and - SPLAT - hit the porch with a very satisfying sound. It was like their own little Old Faithful. 

Sean had only been here long enough for it to rain once before now, but that first time he’d spent about five hours of a pleasantly mild rainstorm stretched out on the porch with his head in a concerned intern’s lap. 

Turns out mushrooms make him absolutely obsessed with water soundscapes. 

Eric had asked him about thirty times if he wanted an ambulance but otherwise had been great company. Eric could put him down as a work reference anytime.

All this to say - Sean saw Young Faithful swelling out of the corner of his eye. 

There was no way, scientifically, nor under the laws of pathetic fallacy that seemed to follow Eduardo Saverin from coast to coast, that the surface tension could handle any more volume. 

Standing a fraction of a moment longer in the middle of the doorway to watch the gutter water slide perfectly down Eduardo’s collar was truly a pleasure. 

It’s the little things. 

Eduardo’s shoulders shot up around his ears and he shook himself like a dog. It was almost endearing except that the movement also blew open another button on his disheveled dress shirt. 

Ugh. 

It was so painful when the most annoying people in the startup equation were also the hottest. 

Sean took the opportunity to survey the long taut throat and collarbones exposed to him nonetheless. Eduardo had sprung up in pronounced goosebumps, which was rather sweet. Maybe the rain was colder than the humidity implied.

For a short moment Sean could swear he saw Eduardo’s long neck….breathe. The pebbled skin seemed to flex or part, like gills or something and -

It was a strange thing. Sean wondered if maybe he was just dizzy from the half-hearted hotboxing the girls had embarked upon earlier, before they’d realised that blinds did not create a hermetic seal and it was way too humid to shut all the sliding doors _and_ the windows.

Sean blinked and swung around, head shaking. Eduardo would have to catch the door before it closed on him. He wound up his call, telling Jimmy to take a break. “You gotta get enough sleep, man. Gotta stay alert. Yeah. You too, man. G’night.”

Mark emerged from his darkened room to greet his friend. It had to be some kind of witchcraft - Sean could send interns down the hall to bang on Mark’s door all day and the kid wouldn’t budge from his screen. 

“Wardo,” Mark said, obviously pleased from the way he pulled at Saverin’s bags. Dustin called out in greeting too and a couple of the more conscious interns flapped their hands.

“Can we have a word?” Eduardo muttered to Mark, dragging him into the hallway and slamming the door after them. 

Sean shrugged. No bed, then. He flopped down on the sofa. 

“Hey, you’re in the way,” Marissa complained, seeing as Farrah was giggling too much to speak right now. 

Sean propped his hands behind his head. “You can get back to resizing icons and writing how-tos or you can be cushions. Your choice.”

“Ugh,” Marissa said, kicking her own feet up to top and tail Sean from the other end of the sofa. “I wrote like thirty pieces of documentation this afternoon. Farrah, you can be my cushion.”

***

Sean woke up alone around ten to find the sun high in the sky, the kitchen devoid of filter coffee, and Eduardo Saverin stripped down to his boxer briefs in the backyard. 

Sean stirred a spoon of sugar into a cup of hot water and powdery instant gunk (the can alleged that it was coffee) and wandered out in a t-shirt he’d borrowed from the clean laundry pile. 

Eduardo had flopped into a rattan recliner next to Mark’s deck chair. He’d passed his sunglasses to Mark and rolled onto his stomach to tan. Mark, meanwhile, was cross legged and squinting through Eduardo’s RayBans at his laptop screen, as usual. 

Sean eased himself down onto the edge of the pool opposite. He dipped his feet in and splashed idly at Marissa and Neil, who were canoodling around the pool ladder. Neil yelped in surprise, ducking under to surface next to Sean’s knee. 

“You found coffee? Neil asked eagerly. 

Sean shrugged and handed him the nearly full mug. “It’s something the colour of coffee,” he said. 

Sean smiled distractedly at Marissa as she swum up behind Neil to beg a sip. 

Sean’s skin was prickling something fierce. He brushed at his arms and checked the concrete for ants. 

“You guys seen any pests out here?” Apart from their tall, dark, loafing CFO, obviously.

The interns shook their heads. “I saw a lizard swimming in the pool on Monday,” Marissa said. “But I like lizards.”

Sean wrinkled his nose, but something else put his hackles up, pricking at his primordial instincts.

It was Eduardo. He was still splayed out on his stomach, nauseatingly smooth golden skin on full display, but he was facing the pool now, glowering balefully at Sean with huge brown eyes. 

Sean shook off his creeping dread now that he knew he was just being observed by the human equivalent of an aggressive guinea pig. 

The two of them remained politely and deliberately distant all afternoon, but Sean was unnerved to find that Eduardo always seemed to be in sight. It was like they were binary stars, or maybe more accurately, repellent magnets, dancing just at the edge of their respective fields. 

Sean sent Eric out for sushi. The kid had just slammed a ten hour coding tear to fix one of their most boring text alignment issues. He deserved dinner on The Bank of Sean Platinum card.

Eric, an eternal crowd pleaser, returned with a literal tub of takoyaki and a couple of platters of inari and California rolls. 

“You are the man,” Dustin said, bumping Eric’s shoulder as he handed off California rolls to Chris and swiped about ten takoyaki with the aid of a BBQ skewer.

Sean is weak for roe, personally, but Eric picked out a decent selection of sashimi.

The kids cleaned it out within fifteen minutes, and Sean had to do a quick re-requisition to make up a plate for Mark. He was still plugged in to his computer out by the pool, fighting with the way the Wall had been randomly ordering people’s posts in some bizarre non-chronological pattern. 

“Dinner?” Sean waved the food directly over Mark’s keyboard, dangerously within biting range.

Mark batted him away in irritation. Eduardo looked up from the scratch pad of equations he’d made out of the back of a torn off box flap. 

“You should eat, Mark,” Eduardo said, evenly. He held his hand out to take the paper plate from Sean. “There’s tuna.”

“Hm,” Mark said, eyes going to the plate and then to Eduardo’s math. “Did you get anywhere with the algorithm?”

Eduardo pointed at the food wordlessly until Mark stuffed a couple of takoyaki balls into his mouth. 

“You’re working on an algorithm?” Sean said, curious. He tilted his head to read Eduardo’s slanted working. 

“Just trying a few numbers to figure out what we could do with this sorting bug. Make it a feature, so to say.” Eduardo shrugged a bare shoulder. 

Sean forced his eyes back to the numbers. “That’s smart thinking,” he said, only slightly begrudging. 

Sean knew Eduardo was smart, had known since they’d met over cocktails in New York. But Eduardo was also guarded and wary, and Sean was self-aware enough to admit he just wasn’t keen on having to go toe to toe with someone as paranoid as himself.

“You want some sushi, Eduardo?” Sean offered. He tipped his head towards the open ranch sliders. “There’s sashimi in the fridge. The kids haven’t found it yet.”

Eduardo almost smiled at that, or it might have been because Mark had just had to hack up an overambitious bite of rice into his hand.

“No, but thank you,” Eduardo said. “Did you know that in the US all fish other than tuna must be frozen first in order to be served raw?”

Sean looked at Eduardo in surprise, and found that Mark was staring at him too. 

A bunch of the interns came sprinting out of the house at full speed and bombed into the pool en masse. Must be the end of a code shift. 

A spray of pool water sprinkled over them like a fine mist. 

“Really?” Mark said around another - and Christ, it might actually be the same - mouthful of rice. 

He wiped the pool water that had clung to his laptop monitor away with the bottom of his ragged t-shirt and jabbed at the save shortcut.

“Yup,” Eduardo said, pulling his feet up out of the splash range. “It’s to kill parasites. Humans are very susceptible to catching parasites from fish. It’s a big issue in Japan.”

Sean blinked and filed that tidbit away for his next dinner meeting. 

“Is there any seaweed salad?” Eduardo asked.

Sean nodded. “Sure. In the fridge. I saw Eric stash a tub on the top shelf.”

“Nice,” Eduardo said, passing Mark his pen and heaving himself upright. He stood up and stretched first, flexing his knees and rolling his joints like they hurt.

Sean tried not to watch Eduardo go, setting his jaw and fixing his eyes to the pavers. Eduardo padded past on undeniably shapely calves and ankles. Sean couldn’t help but note - Eduardo had slightly webbed toes. 

“Huh,” Sean said to himself, pulling up another recliner.

“What?” Mark asked, fingers reaching for his keyboard again.

“Nothing important,” Sean said. “Actually. Can Eduardo swim? I haven’t seen him in the pool yet.”

“He’s Brazilian and from Miami,” Mark pointed out. “I’m pretty sure he can swim.”

Sean hummed In agreement and Mark carried on, opening a clean new Notepad++ document as he talked.

“Wardo picked out this whole place - he was a real pain in the ass about it, actually. Had to be a salt water pool, had to have a bath, enough bedrooms for people to bunk in whilst ‘retaining their human rights’.”

Privately, Sean appreciated Eduardo’s conscientiousness. This place wasn’t exactly five star, but it seemed it could certainly have been a lot worse. 

“I would probably have just picked out some kind of big studio apartment with two futons on rotation and sent an intern out to pick up a bottle of Vitamin D on the weekend.”

“What did you just say, Mark?” Eduardo said, approaching with a small bowl of green seaweed salad and a plastic spork fisted in his hand like a knife. “You wanted to chain a bunch of teenagers to laptops and have them live off of Vitamin D?”

Sean couldn’t help but snort at his dark tone.

“No!” Mark denied quickly. “I didn’t say that at all!”

“Hmmm,” Eduardo said. He sat down on his recliner again, cross legged like Mark this time.

Sean couldn’t help but note his toes looked less webbed from this angle. Not that it was a turn off or anything. Christ, he needed a drink. It was nearly eight.

“Eric!” He called out, expecting and receiving an answer in about ten seconds flat.

“Mr. Parker, sir.” Eric said, diligently trying not to drip pool water anywhere near Mark’s power cable.

“It’s Sean to you, Eric. And I think we need…to party!”

The interns in the pool (and Dustin on the diving board) whooped.

“I’ll call Farrah and get out the cups, si- Sean,” Eric grinned, darting off in the direction of the kitchen.

“Farrah?” Eduardo asked, the frown on his lips evident in his voice even before Sean turned to beam at him. 

“You met her last night. She’s the best booze hook-up in the Valley.” Sean slapped Mark on the back. “And she loves to party with computer guys. There’s some kind of mathematical relationship between girls with Literature majors and tech guys, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Eduardo said, blandly.

“No,” Sean agreed, smiling back at him..

Eduardo lifted his eyebrows and picked up his belongings. “I’ll be in the bath. Have fun, Mark.”

Sean watched him go this time, completely stymied.

“What does he mean, ‘in the bath’?”

Mark shrugged, eyes glued to his screen. “He’s taking a bath. Wardo likes baths.”

“Oh-kay,” Sean said.

***

The great thing about most Western style houses, Sean always thought, was that they were so predictably laid out.

Some architects, over the span of decades, or hell, maybe centuries, had obviously sat down and said, look, this is how it works best for most people. 

This is the standard layout. Bathroom around about here. kitchen here, bedrooms in these slots. Simple, easy, predictable. A couple of variations on the same. Refine to make it more cost effective to build about four hundred of them in a development. 

Why bother to change it up unless you wanted to take a crack at designing your own home. 

Sean had been in a lot of those too. _Terrible_ when you’d had ten drinks and you just wanted to piss, but nothing made sense anymore.

Sean could find the bathroom in this house with his eyes closed, and he did exactly that, mostly because he was way too drunk to keep them fully open.

The door was sticking, so he jolted the handle and it popped open, leading him to pure relief.

Someone had left a tall container of Himalayan rock salt on the side of the sink, which made him laugh as he zipped up. 

It wasn’t so odd in this house, though. Neil had put himself to bed cuddling a ketchup bottle not so long ago, and Sean had a long history of losing M&Ms in bed only to find them smudged down his sides and crushed into his sheets the next day.

Sean was washing his hands, humming cheerily and preening over his latest haircut in the mirror, when something _off_ crept up on him. 

The shower curtain was pulled. Not that unusual but… Sean was okay with curiosity being what got him in the end.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and padded over to whip the curtain back.

“Eduardo?” Sean said, rocking back on his heels. He had fully expected an empty tub, or maybe a pile of laundry.

“Fuck off,” Eduardo said, reaching for the curtain. 

Sean held it out of reach for a second longer, processing what he was seeing. Then he pulled it closed again, politely. 

“Eduardo,” Sean said politely, “why have you turned into half a goldfish in the bath?”

“I guess I used the wrong bathbomb,” Eduardo snapped, “and why did you break into the bathroom when it was _locked_?”

Sean blinked at that, glancing back at the door. “It wasn’t locked,” he said. “It was just sticking a little. Oh.” 

“Shitty locks,” Eduardo swore. There was a splash behind the curtain and Sean wondered if he’d slapped his...his tail on top of the bathwater. 

God, this was all beginning to add up. 

“Should I just go?” Sean wondered. “Sorry for bursting in on your business and all.”

“No!” Eduardo said, echoing loudly in the tiled room. He tossed the curtain open and leaned over the edge of the tub. “Don’t go.”

Sean nodded, then raised one finger for him to wait a moment. He crossed back to the vanity to splash some cold water on his face and then came back, slightly clearer headed. The room wasn’t moving when he nodded anymore, at least.

“Alright, so, you’re what? A mermaid?”

Eduardo glared at him venomously. “That’s about as close as your dry little brain could grasp,” he said, still somehow haughty whilst all cramped up in a grimy tub.

Eduardo’s tail was too long for the bath, much like Sean imagined his legs might be, if he still had them. The elegant fin was awkwardly curled up the fibreglass sides, nearly flopping back onto itself. 

“That looks uncomfortable,” Sean said, unable to stop staring. The gold of his scales glistened like treasure even in the dim light of the single overhead bulb. 

Sean had watched koi that looked like this in Japan, standing for hours in the sprawling ornamental gardens. The carp had been mesmerising, although perhaps they weren’t quite so big, nor so human when it came to their upper halves. 

The scales petered out around Eduardo’s hips, his glimmering fish tail smoothing into firm human musculature and golden skin. 

“Please, don’t,” Eduardo said, quietly, his eyes catching Sean’s and breaking him away from his survey of Eduardo’s lower half.

Sean swallowed. “Sorry,” he said, meaning it. 

Eduardo nodded, and Sean tried not to watch his gills flutter wildly in his throat, the same tender pink as Eduardo’s soft wet mouth.

“You’ve always been like this,” Sean guessed, his instincts telling him it _had_ to be the case, “but did you mean to change in the bath?” 

Eduardo shrugged, hunching in a little. “I didn’t mean to stay so long. It’s just taking a while to change back.”

“You’ve been in here for hours,” Sean said, frowning. “Do you need me to get you something?” 

Eduardo pressed his lips together, hesitant. He obviously didn’t want to surrender his weakness. Smart. But too late.

Sean wheeled around and looked at the vanity. 

The pink salt grinder stared back at him. 

“It’s the wrong kind of salt,” Sean said immediately, mouth moving without any direct input from his brain.

Eduardo twitched, just barely, and his gills gaped of their own volition. 

“You need salt water, right?” Sean said, putting it all together quickly. “You need to get into the pool. The salt water pool.” 

Eduardo looked over at the pink salt again, conflicted. 

“I’ll carry you,” Sean offered. “I won’t drop you. Probably.”

“You have little twig arms,” Eduardo rolled his eyes. “I’m heavier than I look.” 

“You probably don’t weigh 3,000 pounds,” Sean said, lightly, trying not to let Eduardo’s surprised face push him over the edge into drunk hysterics. “C’mon, I’ll get you there.” Sean spread his arms wide like he was ready to go in for a bear hug.

Eduardo lifted his arms to be picked up, looking extremely unhappy about it. Sean dropped to one knee and braced the other foot against the base of the tub. 

He let Eduardo curl his hands around his neck and shoulders. Sean wrapped his own hands around Eduardo’s ribs and his waist and pulled experimentally to see whether he could lift him straight out.

“Whoa, it’s slippery in there,” he mused in surprise, gripping tighter around Eduardo’s hip. 

“Because your bathroom is filthy,” Eduardo said, his low voice lilting directly into Sean’s ear and this position. It was definitely doing something for Sean’s hindbrain. Even if it was all complaints and bitching.

“It wouldn’t hurt you to give it a scrub when you’re in here, even once a week! You have interns, this isn’t a hard one,” Eduardo complained. 

“I can show you a hard one,” Sean said automatically, before lifting one hand in a floppy apology. “Sorry, sorry. Right, I’m concentrating now. Hold on.”

Eduardo clung tightly as Sean heaved him up. Somehow, possibly due to his preternatural drunken strength, Sean managed to slip a forearm under Eduardo’s cool slippery underside. He valiantly suppressed the knowledge that this was Eduardo’s _firm mermaid ass_. He got him fully aloft in a surprisingly secure bridal carry.

“You’re not so heavy,” Sean boasted, toeing open the bathroom door. It hit the adjacent wall with a resounding thwack.

“Shut up, you drunkard,” Eduardo hissed. Sean stumbled down the hall, leaving a damp trail in their wake.

The kids on the last coding shift had irresponsibly left a couple of doors open for air circulation and Sean headed towards the closest one as Eduardo tightened sharp fingers around his neck. He was shivering against Sean’s chest, eyes enormous, gills fluttering so hard Sean could _hear_ them, flittering like butterfly wings. The poor kid was obviously terrified.

“You’re fine, I’ve got you,” Sean said, soothingly, stepping them out into the moonlit yard. 

Mark’s chair was still there, and Sean felt Eduardo stiffen when he spotted it too, but Mark was long gone, knocked out hours ago after facing down Dustin over a tower of tequila shots.

“In you go,” Sean said. Really, it was more of a we, as there was no way in hell he was about to toss a frightened twenty-one year old straight into a cold pool at 3am, merman or otherwise.

Sean walked them down the steps in the shallow end, wincing as his jeans slowly saturated. Eduardo seemed to perk up a little as they waded deeper. He unwound himself, no longer quaking and pushed off of Sean’s chest, ducking down into the deep end where Sean lost sight of even that glittering tail. 

“What, no tip? Thanks for riding with Parker Taxis.” 

Sean unbuttoned his jeans and kicked out of them, making a face as he hauled them up onto the side of the pool to drip dry.

He started to pick his button up open - you cannot attend a party without a button up, he’s always said that - when the golden flash came back around. Eduardo surfaced in front of him, barely a hair’s breadth away. 

“Whoa,” Sean said as Eduardo bobbed in place, his hair slicked back and his skin glowing from the salt water. “Back for another ride so soon?”

Eduardo surged forward and pressed their lips together. They felt soft, and slightly chapped - but they seemed to grow softer as Eduardo went on, the salt water revitalising him even as he licked into Sean’s surprised mouth.

Sean couldn’t resist - he was human and alive and Eduardo was - something - but he was also warm and beautiful, and acting sweetly towards Sean for once in his goddamn life. 

Sean kissed back, pushing his tongue deep, purely out of muscle memory. People liked when he did that, when he took control and showed them there was nothing to be worried about - sex with Sean was good, sex with Sean was great - hell, sex with Sean was often simply pleasurable business, baby.

Eduardo’s mouth was warm inside, his tongue was welcoming, and he made sweet wet sounds, gasps he couldn’t keep back, hums of pleasure that Sean smiled to hear.

“Thank you,” Eduardo breathed into one of his open mouthed kisses, and Sean nearly grinned too hard to kiss back for a moment.

When Sean finally pulled away, it was only because he felt his shirt getting progressively heavier as it soaked up at least a couple of pounds of salty pool water.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Eduardo murmured against his cheek, those huge limpid eyes glistening in the glowing LED pool lights. “Please, Sean, make me a promise.”

Sean shivered. There was a prickling current running through the water that had nothing to do with the temperature. 

Eduardo clutched at the lapels of his open shirt with long elegant fingers. The impossibly smooth scales of Eduardo’s flanks twisted in the water as he kept himself afloat. He rubbed up against the front of Sean’s boxers and the sensitive skin of his lower stomach. 

Sean couldn’t say whether it was an accident or an offer, but he was willing to gamble on something he already knew he was committed to.

“I promise I won’t say anything to anyone,” Sean told Eduardo in a low voice. “This can be - our secret,” he finished, voice halting as an odd chill ran through him. 

It was a surprise even to him as he’d said it that he wholeheartedly believed his own vow. That was not something that happened every day for Sean Parker. 

Eduardo seemed to peer closer into him, holding his gaze for long seconds. He really did have big black pools for eyes. His tail flicked back and forth to keep him bobbing in the same spot. 

“Alright,” Eduardo said, obviously not yet entirely convinced by his earnest words. “You’re bound to me now, anyhow.”

Eduardo gave him a quirk of a smile and pulled away from Sean to cruise around the pool perimeter again. 

He came up a vision; his previously tired face clear and fresh and his lean form golden, even under the blue light. 

Sean had to wet his lips and cast his eyes to the paved poolside to avoid an underwater incident. Eduardo probably had perfect underwater vision.

Why was it that the biggest pains in the ass were always ridiculously hot? 

“Better to make the best of it,” he comforted himself. He snuck a glance back at the water, just in time to track Eduardo’s finely muscled back as he executed a dolphin dive.

“No one would ever believe me anyway.”

**Author's Note:**

> ever wanted to suffer and never stop suffering? you too can be alerted whenever I upload garbage! just go to my profile page and smash that subscribe button to receive horrible notifications straight to your inbox :D


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